MTalley
21st of May 2005 (Sat), 21:59
My oldest child graduated from high school today. The ceremony was set such that my wife and I both had to be on the floor. The parents are handed the diploma and present the diploma to the child. As such, I couldn't do the pictures myself. I could have, for the most part, but I was sitting down on the floor level and would have had a lot of heads in my way.
I set the camera up and did some test shots before everyone arrived so that my son could take the pictures for us. We found that the best vantage point (as the ceremony was held in a church) was from the balcony. We did a guesstimate on distance afterwards and figured that from where my son was sitting with the camera to the back wall of the building was about 60 feet or so.
I took my DRebel and put my old Vivitar 2000 flash unit on my Wien Safesync hotshoe adapter and attached it to the top of the camera. I attached my "L" flash bracket to the camera and put my Vivitar DF200 optical slave flash on the bracket.
The 2000 has a guide number around 80 and the DF200 is rated at 92. The DF200 has a telescoping head, which I pulled all the way out to "zoom". After some test shots, I found that ISO 400, 1/80 sec. @ f/4 worked well. The stage was gently lit with only a couple of overhead can flood lights. All of the walls were very dark wood.
I was pretty pleased with the amount of light the two flashes output simultaneously from such a distance. Here's a sample.
I set the camera up and did some test shots before everyone arrived so that my son could take the pictures for us. We found that the best vantage point (as the ceremony was held in a church) was from the balcony. We did a guesstimate on distance afterwards and figured that from where my son was sitting with the camera to the back wall of the building was about 60 feet or so.
I took my DRebel and put my old Vivitar 2000 flash unit on my Wien Safesync hotshoe adapter and attached it to the top of the camera. I attached my "L" flash bracket to the camera and put my Vivitar DF200 optical slave flash on the bracket.
The 2000 has a guide number around 80 and the DF200 is rated at 92. The DF200 has a telescoping head, which I pulled all the way out to "zoom". After some test shots, I found that ISO 400, 1/80 sec. @ f/4 worked well. The stage was gently lit with only a couple of overhead can flood lights. All of the walls were very dark wood.
I was pretty pleased with the amount of light the two flashes output simultaneously from such a distance. Here's a sample.